A lazy weekend. . .

. . . leads to a lazy Monday morning post. I hate the heat, so this weekend's 90-100 weather was SO hard to bear. As much as we could, G + I stayed very still in the hopes that that would save us from heat exhaustion.

Sat, I had some girlfriends over for brunch. It was make your own waffles day. I tried out this sour cream waffle batter recipe I'd been eyeing for a while, set out some fresh fruit, syrup, jam, all the fixings I could think of, and thought I'd let the girls go to town. A ricotta cheese tart (that I have a great photo of but can't get to cuz work blocks off most picture viewing sites, and I forgot to grab it last nite) and skillet potatoes rounded out the meal. Oh, and some virgin peach bellini that looked totally disgusting and only tasted nominally better, so we'll forget about that.

The make-your-own part was a great idea, I thought, until I tried the first one, poured too much batter into the waffle maker, and made a huge mess. The dogs fortunately licked up most of the mess. But after that, it was G-makes-the-waffles-while-the-girls-got-to-catch-up kind of morning.

The biggest hit had to be our new whipped cream maker that I pulled out for the ocassion. The girls were super addicted, and when G finally got around to grabbing some waffles of his own, he went a little crazy with it too. Went so crazy that he ended up getting cream all over the place -- his face, his leg, the blinds, the floor. Again, we realized how lucky we were to have the dogs to help with the clean up, but even they couldn't work miracles. But at least I didn't hear another word about my waffle making abilities after that.

I guess the one nice thing about the hot weather was that the garden seemed to go a little crazy. Veggies started cropping up like crazy towards the end of last week. Or died, I guess. But the beans for example, took off. Any bean recipe ideas out there? G can't stand them too, so especially if you have something that even bean-haters would love, please send them along. I know I can make something cheesy, like a casserole, and he'd go for it, but it seems like such a shame to cover all the fresh beans with cheese and cream.

The squash are still coming along beautifully too. So far, I've been great at using them as they crop up. That ricotta cheese tart for example took care of most of what we harvested the end of last week. But by Sat, already, there were already a few more almost ready to pick. The plants keep growing and growing too, they seem to take over pretty much where ever they're at, so good thing we didn't try to plant much around them this year.

G's pride and joy -- the one million and one varities of peppers (hot, sweet, and bell) that we have planted are finally starting to appreciate his love and attention. We've already been grabbing serranos for every meal, but I think we'll soon have some full grown bell peppers too.

If you're a sweet pepper fan and are having a hard time growing them in your garden, you might want to give this one a try. Its called the Aconcagua and seems to be thriving with very little fuss. I think they get much bigger than this when they're full grown, so I haven't had a chance to try it yet. But in terms of ease/lack of finickiness, its been a great addition to our garden this year.

And then our eggplant . . . I gotta say, I'm a little confused by our eggplant. The new plants we got from a nursery this year are totally dying. They don't seem to like the heat at all. And they keep getting chewed up. We've been wondering who the culprit could be, until G got Mia licking one of the leaves last week. So we're pretty sure it must be her eating the plant. But who knew that eggplant leaves would be so attrative to dogs!! Anyway, I'm sure that's not helping any. But what's funny is that our plants from last year that were out all winter long AND hang out in a part of the yard that gets a lot more heat seem to be doing pretty darn well.

A long post about sitting next to a stupid guy at a dinner

I believe in science. And if you don't, I'm sorry, but I think you're an idiot. I'm not trying to be mean. And I'm not knocking your religion. Honestly, I've never really gotten the whole religion/science dilemma. My parents are probably one of the most devout people I know, and still, never once in my life have I ever heard them be conflicted between their faith and science.

But what I really have an issue with is people who decide on their own that science is wrong. Because, you know, they know better. Dude, I'm not saying get behind every random study that gets published or anything. Sure, there's bad science out there; you gotta be able to tell the difference. But those people out there who decide not to vaccinate their kids cuz they think it will cause autism and then infect everybody's else's kids with measles? They're idiots. I guess its a controversial topic, but to me the choice is simple. Its not like deciding whether to breast feed or bottle feed, or feed organic or not. Those are choices each parent gets to make. Whether to vaccinate? No, not when it means you're putting other kids at risk. And definitely not when the weight of scientific evidence has found no correlation between vaccinations and autism. Sure, you're injecting a live virus into a baby, might make the little guy a little sick -- there's always a chance of that. But where did people get the whole autism connection from anyway?

Or that guy at our table a couple of weeks ago, when we were at a fundraiser . . . that guy, who stated that global warming was a myth? Who told us that he "wasn't convinced"? And if it does exist, it certainly wasn't our fault? That guy was a moron. A moron backed by Sarah Palin which is SO depressing, though I'm not sure why I'm depressed by that fact most of all. I don't consider Sarah Palin to be much of an expert on anything, so its not like I look to her for my outlook on world issues. But maybe its the fact that she was almost our VP, and may be a fair representation of the many morons in this country.

To some extent, you can't blame him, I guess. How often is the environment in the news anyway? Global warming seems to be just a term that's out there all the time with no content or explanation. Ultimately, in order to affect change, we all need to really change the way we live our lives. And people are as clueless about that as we've always been cuz well, I guess the news is too busy reporting on MJ's death to care that on the same day, the House passed a million page climate change bill that very few people have probably read or understood (including the representatives that signed it).

So I wonder what it would take for this guy to be convinced. More news coverage? The islands of Maldives to be completely submerged? The polar bears to become extinct? All right, I'll admit though that my concern for global warming only began a few years ago when I was watching Planet Earth and saw their footage of this polar bear swimming desperately through the melting ice, looking for food. He finally came upon a herd of walruses and tried and tried to catch one, but no luck. When the video team left off, the bear was still starving and tired and unlikely to eat any time soon. I was almost in tears. So I know, its not like I was swayed by the breadth of scientific studies about global warming.

So do what you gotta do. Read the news more. Watch DVDs that make you want to cry. Whatever it takes. Cuz there's no excuse for being an idiot.

Harvest time

The first of our crops came in last week, and of course its just the beginning! As always, that first batch is kinda exciting. By the end of the summer, I feel like I never want to see a zucchini or tomato again and am paying people to take them off my hands. But I'm not there yet.

First, our cherry tree has been about 6x more fruitful than last year. Since we just planted it a little over a year ago, its not a ton. And the one harvest is all we'll get until next year. But last year, our pitifully few cherries were mostly eaten by birds before we managed to get them off the tree, so you can imagine our pride at being able to have any fruit at all. G bought a big piece of netting that we covered the tree with as soon as the fruit started appearing. It was this humongous ugly black thing that we just draped over the tree. We meant to clean it up a bit and make it look less horrendous than it was. But we got lazy, of course, and ended up just leaving the extra netting laying on the grass. Then we started worrying about the dogs peeing on it, so we wadded everything up and tied it back a bit with zip ties. Not the most attractive feature on our lawn. I nagged G about it for a while, but I guess I'll stop now, since we ended up with this for our troubles:



I forgot to take pictures of the chives, cilantro, and serrano peppers. And then I didn't think to put the herbs in the fridge so they were all kind of wilted and not so photogenic by the time I remembered, so you'll have to wait for the next batch of those.

But our zucchini started taking off, too. I'm already scrambling for some good squash recipes, so if you have any, please send them my way. We have something like 6 squash plants this year, so feel free to keep the recipes coming; I have a feeling that I'll never have too many.

Fortunately, my favorite cooking site highlighted some zucchini recipes just last week, and I thought I'd try my hand with this one for the first of what I'm sure will be many squash-centered dinners (with some substitutions of course -- using basil/cilantro/chives for the green sauce to use my garden produce). The only thing about this site that's a little demoralizing is that the pictures are always SO pretty and my end result never look quite as appetizing. I so admire cooks that make cooking seem easy and turn out such fabulous looking meals. I love to cook, but presentation has never been my strong suit. Its part of the reason I don't really bother baking. Half the best part about desserts is them looking so pretty.

And for all that I love to cook, there's always plenty that I have no idea about. For example, with the squash recipe, who would have thought that fresh bread crumbs would such a pain to produce. I'm guessing Heidi didn't burn out her brand new blender when she threw her bread in the food processor. And how the heck did she get such homegenous bread crumbs? After the blender made this high pitched whirring sound and started to smoke a bit, I had to resort to tearing bread by hand and just going with whatever shape ripped off. Plus, I don't know what else she did differently, but as is often the case with me and recipes, the end product is a far cry from what it should be:



Not to mention that I highly doubt she ended up with as big of a mess as I did. Or a cut on her finger from her really sharp knives. How do people pull that off?

But anyway, despite the issues, it still tasted amazing. And smelled amazing too! I left it in the oven while I took the dogs out; when I came back, I could actually smell it as I walked up the street. I hope that a lot of people walked past our house that evening and wondered what we were having for dinner.

How awesome am I?

Two days into the week and still no check engine light!! I guess fiddling around with the gas cap worked, just not immediately. So feel free to throw any other car questions my way, cuz I'm on a roll. Well, how many constitutes a roll anyway? Can I start my own car talk blog yet? I guess, though, the gas cap is a common "1st step" when it comes to the engine light coming on. It was the first thing G suggested too when I told him he needed to take my car in. But personally, I think he was just trying to downplay my awesomeness.

The married life

It's weird. Believe it or not, I'm a terrible sharer. Shocking right? Here I am with a blog, have no problems embarrassing myself in public, etc. Certainly the ladies I met at the bachelorette party last week would be shocked: I was probably the best sharer in the room when we all started talking about sex. But to me, talking about sex is easy. Holding out my life for other people's entertainment is easy, too. Because I'm the first one to laugh about it.

What's hard for me are the more personal, not so funny, things. I hold that stuff pretty close to my chest. I remember one time G told a friend about a fight we had, and I was so mad that we had an even bigger fight. Of course I can't tell you what it was that we fought about cuz that would be sharing something that's kind of personal, and I'd have to kill you after. And actually, I, er, kind of can't remember now, although it seemed huge at the time. Anyway, the point is that I draw some pretty fixed lines in the sand. Lines that might be hard (or impossible) for anyone else to see. Even with the sex talk.

Before I met G, I could brood about something for weeks and weeks and never share it with anybody. And there were probably things about my life that I'd only ever talked about with a few close friends. And honestly, I never thought much of it. Now, he's here, and I tell him everything. Seriously, every little thing, every random thought that pops into my head, he hears about. Of course I have some friends too that are fairly tolerant of me and don't mind me going on about stuff. But the nice thing about a husband is that he's always around when I need him. He has to listen (though I think he's secretly thinking about other stuff pretty much whenever I'm talking) and his hours of availability are pretty darn good.

Until this last week when he went on a fishing trip. Which was great, except that since Fri, I had been wanting to gripe about something and he wasn't around. It drove me totally, completely nuts. It wasn't anything earth-shattering, and actually its something he's heard a lot about these last few months. So nothing new. But just the fact that I couldn't just go on about it made the whole thing feel SO heavy. Fortunately, my friend let me get it all out of my system late Sat night, so I didn't spend the whole weekend working myself up into a tizzy.

But it had me thinking: when did this happen? How did it happen? Definitely gone are the weeks and weeks of brooding. Apparently, I can barely manage to hold something in for a day or two. No one told me I was signing up for this when I got married. It's not that I missed him exactly. Well, of course I did miss him, too. I'm always happier when he's around (though its cool to get some girlie movies in while he's gone). But I guess what I hadn't fully realized before is all the ways in which he keeps me sane. Which is nice. But its a little freaky too. Cuz what does say about my sanity when he's not around? Not to mention that it makes me seem totally dependent, which is the last thing I would have called myself a few years ago.

So . . . kind of on this note, and as part of a continuing effort to get a little more activity on this blog, I thought I'd throw in a little poll. Good or bad, I guess we all change a little when we're in a relationship. And its fine. But isn't there that one little thing that you kind of miss a little from your single days? Maybe just a teensy bit? If so, tell me about it by voting on the little poll to your right. I think you can do it anonymously, but its my first time playing around with the gadget, so I'm not sure if it works. If people seem to like the whole poll thing, maybe I'll start trying to throw on a few more now and again. Assuming I can think of questions to ask -- even this one was hard.

25 Random Things About My Commute

1. It sucks. I went from walking to work in 5 minutes to driving for at least an hour each way.

2. There is a always a backup at the metering lights, no matter what time you go. But on the plus side, there is always one lane at the lights that moves much faster and has fewer cars. I think people think it might be asshole-y to suddenly switch lanes just as you're pulling up, kind of like when you're waiting to pay toll. So they stick with the lane they end up in, even if the one right next to them is much shorter. Because chances are, there's some one not that far behind you in that lane, and I guess it would be rude to swing out in front of them Fortunately for me, I have no qualms about it. So I always end up in the short lane.

3. Also on the plus side, I have lots of time to compose my blogs in my head, hence my frequent posts this week.

4. Sometimes, I like to play this game where I try to figure out where I would have ended up had I done the nice thing and waited. I look for that car that ended in what would have been my position and see how much longer it's taking them to make their way to the front of the line. Once, I got passed by that car a few seconds after we went through the lights, and I was pretty annoyed.

5. Before my unfortunate GPS incident, I used to play another game where I would try to beat the time it expected me to arrive. Now of course, my GPS had to be removed from my car for its own protection.

6. Clearly, its a boring commute.

7. To make matters worse, the radio stations I listen to play a grand total of 12 songs that they cycle through over and over again. Constantly switching between them and NPR seems to provide the highest chance of actually finding something decent to listen to.

8. The morning show on 97.3 is pretty entertaining most days. but they seem to take such long commercial breaks.

9. Is it just me or has NPR been doing way more "human interest" stories these days. Like really, that piece on that guy who built some statue with construction material and got arrested? I mean, sure it was fascinating, but did they need to interview him also? What I particularly loved about that story was that the guy had already been on probation for getting drunk and taking some random boat for a cruise (as in truly random -- it was just parked there, I guess, and he took it for a joyride and accidentally brought it back to some one else's dock). So of course the statute was causing him all kinds of problems cuz of this prior incident. A college kid, it turns out, go figure. Absolutely riveting.

10. Man 25 is a lot, how do people do this?

11. Oh so before this job, I couldn't remember the last time I woke up at 5:30, but now I do it regularly (cuz the commute sucks a little less when I'm barely awake).

12. Nowadays, I only snooze approximately 4 times before dragging myself out of bed. G doesn't seem to appreciate my progress nearly as much as I do. Even after I tried to explain to him how its not even 4 times everytime since I make every effort to turn off my alarm just before the 4th snooze. Its a little hard to gauge sometimes since I fall asleep between each snooze, but I am trying.

13. G's taken over the morning dog walks since I started commuting. But he's out of town now, so I've had to do it. And do you know how many people get up at 5:30 in the morning to walk their dogs? Zero! Go figure, right? I would have figured everyone would have been clamoring but apparently not. These people have no idea what they're missing out on. Actually very few people seem to be awake at all. But what's weird is that a little later, when I'm on the road at 6:30, they all seem to come out of the woodwork when its time to wait for the metering lights. I think they're doing it to screw with me.

14. The dogs are slower at 5:30, too. Either that or everyone's lawn smelled really good this morning.

15. Even my car is getting tired of the commute. Yesterday, as I was going home, the check engine light came on, which I think is my car protesting the early mornings. I jiggled the gas cap when I got home, thinking that fixed the problem and promptly forgot about the whole thing. About 10 years ago, I had a check engine light come on in a car, and it was because I lost the gas cap. And what was sneaky about it was that I had lost the cap for weeks before the light came on. So of course, I couldn't correlate the two and ended up paying like 100 bucks for some mechanic to "diagnose" the problem. So ha, this time, I knew exactly what to do. With this car, my gas cap is actually attached so I can't drive off and forget about it. But I did jiggle it around a bit and make sure it was on tight. And how cool would it be if I could say that I got in this morning and voila, no check engine light! How many bragging rights would that have won me? But no, not the case. So now the only thing left to do is wait for G to come home and take it into the shop. At least I'll be able to tell him that I tried though.

23. Oh, awesome, we're moving along much faster now.

24. So its weird. I would assume that the majority of the people that do this drive are also commuters who drive the same route every day. Otherwise, why would you be up so early. So then some one explain this to me. For the last week or so, there have been a couple of signs at various points stating that the freeway will be closed on such and such dates between such and such time. Both signs are announcing that it will be at night, from like 10 pm - 4 am or something like that. The signs haven't changed since I first saw them. I'm guessing they haven't changed for anyone else either. So why is it that EVERY time we pass them, people slow down to look at them AGAIN? Dude, you're fine, you're not going to be detoured anywhere. Nothing's changed since yesterday. If we're all going to have to this crappy commute together, the least we can do is keep it moving, right? I don't get it.

25. Whew, that actually wasn't as bad as I thought it would be.

How about an MRI for that headache?

While out to lunch with some co-workers the other day, our talk gradually shifted to health care. Actually, first it was about pregnancy (for some bizarre reason, I seem to find myself in some sort of unitiated baby/maternity/pregnancy conversation about once every day or two these days) which then led to us talking about rising health care costs. One co-worker who gave birth a couple of years ago told us that she needed a C-section and their medical bill totaled almost $40,000. Fortunately, of course, her insurance picked up the tab. A normal pregnancy, I learned, was itself about $15,000 about a year and a half ago. And this from a guy whose wife had a natural childbirth! No drugs or anything, all they did was stand there, yell for her to push, and be there to catch. Thirty years ago, however, my other colleague had been billed $257 for her entire delivery, of which her insurance paid $200. Is it really that much more to bring a baby into the world now? What are doctors doing differently these days anyway? Did some sort of new technology make the whole childbirth process less of a pain in the ass?

Since then, the topic of health has been a bit on my mind. Not surprising, I suppose, seeing as how its a frequent news topic these days. Obama just spoke before the AMA and basically told them that any health care reform bill will result in doctors having to be be paid less money. I hear they took it reasonably well, as in, there wasn't any booing or shoe-throwing. Not a bad start. The Obama administration, of course, is in favor of some sort of affordable public insurance plan like Medicare. And this makes sense. The whole idea of health insurance being tied to employment is completely strange to me. Who suddenly decided that it was the employer's role to pay for health care anyway? And how unfair is it that you can get better or worse (or no) health care just depending on where you work?

So definitely the idea of public insurance is a GREAT idea and long overdue. But I was listening to NPR the other day, and they did a profile on a county in Massachusettes (Howard County) that offered a low cost ($50-70 a month) to its residents. The goal of the plan was to promote prevention, healthier habits, etc. and catch issues sooner rather than in an emergency room (thereby keeping costs down). But while its been super successful with those individuals that participate, one of the biggest problems they have run across is that most people (as in something like 95% of those eligible) don't even enroll.

And anyway, I'm not convinced that changing who pays for the health care (the govt vs. health insurance companies) really changes the problem. What I want to know is why health care is so expensive to begin with. A few weeks ago, I read this fascinating article in the New Yorker that attempts to address this very question. Its a long article but definitely worth reading if you have the time. The author, Atul Gawande (awesome surgeon and writer), is trying to find out why one county in TX spends thousands more in Medicare funds per person than anywhere else in the US. And the answer, he determines, is that the doctors there perform more tests, surgical procedures, etc. Procedures that don't necessarily lead to better health care or provide more satisfying medical experiences for patients. That is, more is better. But in medicine, that's not always the case. Gawande argues that where medicine has proved to be the most successful are places like Mayo and Kaiser, where doctors of different specialities work together to treat patients, where doctors are paid a monthly salary rather than by test performed. Or, as an another example, he cites Grand Junction, CO, where physicians and HMOs have created a medical community that works together to look at each patient and root out problems, resulting in health care that is comprehensive, low-cost, collaborative, and accountable.

A few weeks ago, while we were in Napa, we were chatting with one of the pourers at a winery we were at. He told us it was his first day back at work after his appendix had ruptured. A young guy, he was without health insurance when it happened. While he was recovering at home, he received his bill for the procedure and hospital stay: $91,000! Now if that's not a reason to look at health care prices, I don't know what it is.

Any docs or med students out there that have some insight on the whole issue? I'd be curious to get your take on it.

Obsession

Lately, I've been a bit curious . . . no, actually more like obsessed with this blog. Specifically, I've been wondering how many of you out there read this thing. When I first started, I assumed I'd eventually build a circle of a few loyal readers. And that was fine. I figured the blog was more an outlet for me to go on about stuff than anything else. But I don't know. Now, I love hearing that people read my blog. And I want more!

I think my obsession began a few months ago. Some of you may have noticed the little site monitor icon on the right. I added it a while ago when I actually was just a bit curious about my audience. So that you don't freak out and think I'm tracking your every move or anything, the site monitor gives me just some basic demographic information -- how many people have been on, when, from where, for how long. Sometimes it has an ISP address included or more often, the internet provider. Hmm, I guess it is a lot of info. But its not the easiest format for viewing, so honestly, I don't look too closely at the specifics for each visitor. Rather, I just focus on the overall number and the general locations they're coming from.

But this is what got me going a little crazy. Imagine my shock to realize that I actually get more than a small handful of visitors each day. This week already, for example, I've had 30-something hits! I know its not a ton. It's a fairly inflated number too because I know that some of you check daily or multiple times daily (thanks for that by the way! That's awesome). And last week, I got all excited because it looked like some one from Baltimore, MD kept logging on and I couldn't figure out who would log on SO much until I realized that my work's main offices are in Baltimore. Doh! That was me logging on over and over again before I set the monitor to ignore my visits! So I'm sure there are some other visits that can be explained away by me being a little dense. But still, since there are only about 5-6 regular readers that I know about, I'm trying to figure out where the rest of you are coming from. Glancing through the visits, there are at least another 6 regular visitors that I can't identify. For example, I don't know anyone in Arkansas, do I?

What makes it even more puzzling is that the stupid monitor almost always says people log on for 0 seconds. As in, people click over, realize its stupid, and move on. That actually had me feeling a little down at first. Come on, its that bad? But now I'm starting to wonder if the timer is off cuz its hard for me to believe that people would keep coming back over and over again and then clicking away. Right? And the possibility of my blog being caught in some automated computer searches has occurred to me also, but after so many now, its kind of weird. Especially since I've set my blog to not show up on internet searches.

So now, I'm a little fascinated. Who are you guys out there? If you feel like leaving a comment, I'd love to hear from you. And as long as you're doing that, maybe you can offer any suggestions you might have for making the blog more interesting. Cuz that's part of the fixation too . . . now that I'm realizing that I might have a little bit of a regular, audience, I want more. That was part of what all the recent new layout changes have been about -- I want my blog to seem cool to look at. I'll hopefully be including more pictures too, so that'll hopefully help with the visual stuff. But more interesting content would be nice, too, I'm sure. :)

Believe me, I do know though how nice it is to lurk in secret. There are quite a few blogs that I follow without ever making a peep. So if you don't feel like commenting, I suppose its ok. But it has really been driving me nuts. I have been thinking of other ways to increase participation too. Ways to ferret out the number of actual readers without you having to reveal your identities -- maybe a fun weekly poll question or something like that? Stay tuned, I'll see what I can come up with.

Losing my way

So take a good look at this picture

because if you're looking for a new GPS, I do NOT recommend this one. I mean, yeah, it gets you mostly where you want to go, I suppose. But it sucks.

The first indication I had that it has its crappy moments is a while back when I was going to IKEA in East Palo Alto before the wedding. I actually happen to know exactly where ikea is, but I had just gotten the GPS and was in the entering-in-every-destination mode. If you've ever been to this one, you'll know that its right off the freeway. Like seriously, right off the freeway. Instead of taking me there, the GPS decided to make me exit a couple of exits south of the actual store and then had me on some random side road going even farther south. Like a nitwit, I followed the directions blindly for a good 10 minutes before I realized what was up. And keep in mind that I know this area fairly well, having lived around there for ages -- so hence, NITWIT!

Anyway, there's been a few more issues over the last few months. Stupid things that could usually be explained by the software using old maps or something -- you know a few Taco Bells off the freeway that were no longer there, that kind of thing. A particularly memorable moment was when I went to Oregon a while back when it decided to not take me to the airport parking lot I needed to go to and instead decided I needed to be doing loops around South San Francisco. I've been frustrated but decided to keep forging ahead. Well, actually, we had decided to return it to Cost-Co eventually but there seemed to be no rush.

But Sat was the last straw. I was heading up to Sonoma for my friend's bachelorette party. And it seemed to find the hotel/spa in Sonoma just fine. But about an hour into my drive, I felt like a couple of coffee. What sucks is that before my GPS-days, I would have waited til I saw a Starbucks off the freeway and just pulled over. Now, I thought, haha, I'd find one nearby and it'd be awesome. I could get it sooner!! It directed me off the freeway near a big shopping center in Fremont. OK, actually, it was a center that looked like it would have a Starbucks in there, so looking good so far. We drove past the center, came up around the back. I swear, I even thought at this point, how lucky I have this thing. I would have spent ages driving around this place looking for coffee, but the GPS knew exactly where to go. Looped around a bit more. And some more. And finally arrived at what the GPS thought was a Starbucks. I think it might have been a Ross. Anyway, I still ended up driving through the shopping center and got no coffee. The fun part was that it was Sat morning and there were a lot of people shopping and I managed to hit every single light. Approximately 25 minutes later, I got back onto the freeway empty-handed.

A little later, I realized I would probably have to cross a bridge at some point and had no cash for the toll. I needed $$ for the wknd anyway, so it seemed like a good time to pull over and look for an ATM (and maybe there'd be a Starbucks next door!). Again, I looked for the nearest ATM on the gps and found a credit union a couple of exits ahead (awesome, since I have a credit union). Turned out the ATM was actually a couple of miles off the freeway in Richmond somewhere. OK, that's fine, I guess. Maybe it was too much to expect that it would be right off the freeway. Following the directions, I drove to what was supposed to be an ATM and what was actually Contra Costa College. To make matters worse, I think they were having gradutation ceremony so lots of the surrounding roads were blocked off, and I didn't figure out why until I drove around trying to get to the "ATM" and finally got close enough to see it. It was a lot of fun trying to get outta there. And the optimist that I am, I even got out of my car and walked a few blocks to where the ATM was supposed to be, thinking maybe its just in the college somewhere and I couldn't see it while driving.

OK -- more than half hr later, I'm back on the freeway, wondering when the bridge was coming. Turns out I was closer than I thought. It came up on me like a couple of exits later. No warning, and suddenly I'm stuck getting on the bridge with no cash. Well, almost. At the last second, there was an exit, so I took it, came back the other way to look for an ATM again. You get where this is going, right? Anyway, that little detour lasted another half hr and actually took me to the federal building in Richmond. If I were ever planning on transferring locations at my current job, that'd be one of my options, so I'm glad I got a chance to check it out. Since there was no ATM there, I'm of course grasping for ways to find meaning to my experience.

Fortunately, there was a Walgreens across the street which happened to have a B of A inside. I decided to eat the convenience fee and just go there. I'd like to point out too that the B of A hadn't shown up on the GPS. But whatever.

A little closer to my destination, starving, I pulled over to a Jack in the Box off the freeway that I managed to find despite my GPS's attempts to screw me over again. But getting back on the freeway was a different story. I don't know why I even turned the stupid thing on again honestly. I figured it knew where the hotel was and that was my next and final destination, so why not just go with it. But first it tried to make me turn right when I could literally see the freeway on ramp on the left. I turned left. THEN, it re-routed itself and told me to get onto the freeway going S even though I could have sworn we were going north. But this is where my need to follow directions again the better of me. Suddenly I had doubt. Before I pulled out, I had been very close to my turnoff. Maybe while circling around the freeway, I had passed it and that's why I was to go south. Unable to make a quick decision (I never can), I went south. Only to be told to take the next exit and come back north!

Needless to say, I arrived at my final destination almost 2 hrs late and not very happy with life. The girls, already enjoying their relaxing spa afternoon, were - I'm sure - absolutely thrilled to having me come in all ranting and raving. And G, who had to endure phone updates every step of the way, expressed some concern for the safety of the GPS (after all, how can we return it if I've destroyed it?).

Fortunately, on my way home, I had my friend Vid to guide me. Other than a winding, circuitous, oftentimes scary "shortcut" to the freeway in Sausilito, she did quite well.

The 4 cousins at the Napa zoo

The fun stuff

It occurred to me yesterday that I don't do much blogging about the things that a lot of other people blog about -- you know, what I do on weekends or out with friends. I don't know why that is. I guess I always figured if its not quirky or if I'm not ranting about something, it can't be very entertaining. Happy times are fun for me, but don't make for very exciting stories. And I have come across bloggers that I feel are way too "First I did this, then that. Etc." You know, a chronicle of a life as it happens. Frankly I prefer that people pick out the interesting stuff and just give me that. So that's kind of how I've always approached my own blogging. And what attracts me to other blogs. Well, that, good writing, and pretty pictures. Probably in that order.

But anyway, in thinking about it a bit further, I'm wondering. . . Not long ago, I had a whole entry on my dog kicking poop onto my leg. If that's not trivial, I'm not sure what is. If you've read that and are still here, maybe (just maybe) you're interested in hearing about my trip to Napa last week. Or for all I know, I lost my regular readers a long time ago, so who cares what I write about now anyway.

So . . . last week, we went to Napa and it was awesome. Actually, I seem to be making my way up to that part of the bay a lot lately. I was there end of April too, and I'm going back this weekend for a bachelorette party. The lady at Sequoia Groves actually recognized G and I -- hmm, is it a sign we're going too much if the pourers start recognizing you? It was kind of a last minute trip that I owe to my cousin. She decided on the spur of the moment to come across country to Napa. And my brother and I sighed, changed all our plans (oh, mine were so exciting too -- a lot of hanging around the house) and decided to join her -- terrible life we lead, huh? Doesn't that sound SO difficult? Having to spend a whole weekend wine tasting!?! I know, we're still trying to figure out how to forgive her. :)

G's brother lives up there also, so he and my sister-in-law put us up for the wknd. They love it when we come up with our three dogs because they always feel like they don't have enough animals of their own with their dog and 3 cats. It was like being in a vet's office. By the way, as a side note, one of the nicest things about acquiring new family is the immediate increase in the number of people you can crash with. My sister-in-law picked all our wineries and food for the wknd, which was an added bonus. And if I think one of the pourers recognizing me is huge, I've got nothing on her -- talk about being shown around by a regular.

But anyway, so the best part of the trip -- well, ok, aside from getting to hang out with family, some lovely wineries and great wine, delicious food, and amazing weather -- was that on Sat, G snuck a new camera into my purse. Apparently a "just because I've been wanting one" gift. Sweet, huh? I didn't even notice, even after he tried a couple of times to comment on how crazy big my purse and what did I have in that thing anyway? Its a super cute tiny little camera too, that I already banged up a little, knocking it over in my heavily buzzed state. So now, I have no more excuses to not pepper this blog with cool pictures.

I have to admit, it did come back to bite me a little. Later that afternoon, when I was buzzed and knocking over champagne glasses, he managed to get some quite damning evidence, which I'm not quite sure I want to share here. Well, you know me -- I'm a glutton for embarrassment but I'm not the only one in the pics, and I do recognize that not everyone likes these things posted for the world to see. Or my three readers to see anyway. :) But just to get G back, I figured I'd share this priceless one of him and my brother.

Chomping at the bit. . .

Sometimes I wonder if I was always litigious and that's why the law was a good place for me or if going to law school brought out the sue-happy tendencies. You know, the usual chicken/egg question. :) I'm not sure what the answer but I have to admit that I'm slightly disturbed by how energetic I feel when I have the possibility of ripping some one a new one via letter. Is this normal?

A few weeks ago, over Memorial Day wknd, we went to Tahoe. Rented a huge cabin with a bunch of friends and spent the weekend cooking, eating, drinking, and hiking around. It was a great weekend except for one terrible thing that happened. There was a big deck on the house that looked down into the yard of the property. Early on in the weekend, people noticed that the railing was a bit rickety and made sure to keep their kids from getting to close to the edge. Some one might have even commented on how large the gap between where the railing started and the deck. But we had no inkling how big of a problem that would turn out to be. So basically, its the horizontal gap between the bottom of the deck and where the railing starts. I'm not sure if you can tell how wide it is from this picture but that's the gap I'm referring to.

So Sun morning, we've just finished breakfast. We're all kind of scattered around getting ready to go out for the day, but taking our time. Our friends Liisa and Dave had brought their 4 month old absolutely adorable super mellow German Shepherd puppy. She apparently was out on the deck napping. I was downstairs, so didn't see it, but I'm imaging she must have been a bit like Mia when she's napping in the sun, all sprawled out, totally unladylike and totally passed out.

The next thing I know, I hear that she's fallen off the deck! I guess some one heard some whimpering and was wondering about it. Then the neighbor came by and told us one of our dogs was down on the ground. That poor thing hadn't even known what happened! She must have rolled and then wham! woke up 15 ft below. I still get a little teary eyed when I think about it. She couldn't even stand up after it happened.

So then our friends had to find an emergency vet that was open during a holiday weekend (in Carson City about an hour away). They ended up having to drop the dog off because the specialist wasn't in. And then even leave the dog there for a couple of nights because they couldn't perform surgery on her right away. So they had to go home at the end of the weekend, then drive back 3 hrs to pick her up after surgery. They could have found a vet closer to home of course, but that would have entailed taking an injured dog home and then waiting until they could find another vet surgeon who could fit her in. A couple of thousand dollars and a few extra trips back to the Tahoe area later, she seems to be doing well. As upset as I get thinking about it, it could have been a LOT worse. She fell onto this area of the yard that was kind of rocky and uneven. But in the end, she ended up breaking just one "arm." They have her in pins now, but once this is all over, she should recover fully. Which, especially since she's such a young puppy, is a huge relief.

So this is where the litigious part comes in. Liisa sent a very nice letter to the property manager for the property that I had primarily been dealing with asking that he submit their medical costs to his insurance policy. She told me that she didn't even care about the $, just wanted to make sure he was aware of the problem and fixed it. There were a lot of kids around over the weekend, and it could have been any one of them falling through that gap. Not to mention that the whole railing felt a little unstable to begin with. If he had sent her back a polite letter (even if he hadn't reimbursed her), she would have dropped it. Already pointing to a huge difference between me and other people. :)

But actually, he was nasty. His letter was completely unapologetic, and said that her mentioning the insurance policy was "beyond the pale" (which by the way means "outrageous" -- people I've told this story to seem to have not heard this expression before) and he wasn't even going to dignify her email with a response. So now, of course, its ON.

Liisa called the city. They went to go check out the property and it turns out that he's completely in violation of city regulations for how big that gap should be (4 inches -- he was close to 2x that probably). Plus, he doesn't have a permit for a hot tub that's on the deck. They're going to be sending him a letter informing him of these violations. Liisa wants to send him another polite email also; maybe after the city's letter, he'll be more responsive. And I suppose know that's probably the best way to go. But I got my lawyer letter already being composed in my head. Got some great tort liability law to throw in. And I'm dying to let him know that I'm an attorney. In his email to Liisa, he signed his name as an "Esquire." I think its just to scare her off. He's definitely not licensed to practice in California (I checked). And I certainly hadn't seen it in his signature during the whole time I was arranging all the rental details. Dude, he thinks he can play attorney and get away with it?

So basically, I'm just waiting to be let out of the gate. :) I wish the whole thing had never happened, but now that it has, I just want this annoying man to suffer. Is that terrible?

your tax dollars at work

So today I got a sampling of some of the fine people leeching off the government in the form of monthly disability checks. My favorite was probably this lovely gentleman: An older guy (maybe in his mid-50s), he came in looking somewhat awkward but not really exhibiting any of the disability symptoms I've seen in other people. Sometimes, people come in limping or struggle to open the door, and of course the cynic in me wonders how much they're exaggerating for the sake of the hearing. Not this dude, he just sat there picking at his finger nails.

A guard came in with him and posted himself in the back corner of the room. Now, I haven't really sat in on that many cases, but this was kind of unusual too. I wondered if it was some sort of new policy. Until about 3 minutes into the hearing, when upon questioning, the claimant revealed that he had recently been in prison for assault with a deadly weapon. Grr-eat. So hence, the guard at the door. In fact , the guy had spent approximately 20 years of his life in prison, over the course of 4 sentences for various offenses related to robbery and assault and battery. I loved that when the judge asked him how many years total, his first response was, "In County Jails too?"

So essentially, the guy's spent over a third of his life in prison. He stopped school in the 7th grade. In the last two decades, he's worked at one job for about a total of a year and another one for 11 days. He had to quit these jobs when had to go to prison. Darn. It appears that he had problems with drugs and alcohol in the past. Asked about his disability he said that he "can't be around other people" and that was why he couldn't work, that he got frustrated and angry and couldn't focus. Really, they're handing out disability for that these days? Where do I sign up?

Asked for his opinion of why that could be, he informed the judge that it was likely due to his numerous prison sentences. "I carry that fear with me out here on the streets." While he's sought help for his condition, "there's a lot inside" that he couldn't tell anyone.

OK, so at this point, I had to laugh. Not out loud or anything, but I couldn't stop smiling and I had to look down at my notebook. There was probably a period of about 5 minutes where I just couldn't look at him for fear that I'd start cracking up. How lucky are we to get that one sensitive assault-with-a-deadly-weapon-criminal! Totally priceless, right? "I always feel inferior and my feelings get hurt." Of course, I'm dying even more, but then he said, "I'll see people on the street and they'll be laughing at something. And I think they're laughing at me and it makes me angry. I can't shake it. And that's when I lose it." Uh oh. You can believe that I STOPPED smiling at that point. It would have been just my luck to be caught laughing at the hardened criminal that apparently assaults people for it!

Anyway, long story short, apparently he'll be getting disability. Which goes to show that if you want money from the government, all you have to do is drop out of school, attack a few people, come down with a drinking problem, and scare off anybody that might be tempted to give you a job. Seems to work every time. Well, I guess in all fairness, I have to admit that once the judge started reviewing the medical evidence, there did seem to be quite a history of bipolar depression disorder and schizophrenia. But none of that other stuff seemed to hurt either.

Plus, the judge pointed out after the hearing, he didn't seem bright enough to have made any of his stuff up. I hear that.